Divine Diversity in The Holy Trinity

At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus commissions his followers, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." In the Gospel of John at the Last Supper Jesus describes the Holy Spirit - who comes from the Father and the Son - as one who is Comforter and Advocate, the Spirit of Peace, the Spirit of Truth.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all believe in One God; we are sister monotheistic religions. Unique to Christianity is the idea of The Trinity: that the One God we believe in is known as Three Persons who are distinct yet co-equal, not as a three separate beings in 'partnership' but who are fully God together. One of the mysteries the Trinity reveals to us about God is that in God's very nature and essence, there is a foundation of diversity.

God created a universe filled with divine diversity. Catholic theologian Richard Rohr describes this: "God clearly loves diversity. All we need to do is look at the animal world, or the world under the sea, or each human being: who of us looks exactly alike? We are always different. Is there any evidence to show where, in all creation, that God prefers uniformity? But we consistently confuse uniformity with spiritual unity. The mystery that we’re talking about is revealed in the Trinity: the three are maintained as diverse, different and distinct, and yet they are radically “One”! The foundational philosophical problem has been called the problem of the one and the many. How can there be one and how can there be many? In the Trinity, we have the paradox at least metaphorically resolved. But most of us don’t easily know how to be both diverse and united. We want to make everybody the same."

We almost always describe the Trinity as Father, Son, Holy Spirit - even though we also know that God is beyond gender. What other words can we use to name the diversity of God? Love, Beloved, Love-in-Action. Creator, Liberator, Companion. Mother, Child, Breath-of-God.

Let us who are created in the IMAGO DEI - Latin for "Image of God" - bear witness to God's divine diversity as we proclaim to the world the beautiful mystery of the Trinity.

Blessings,

Rev Jill

Trinity Icon by Kelly Latimore